Sincere Question...No Troll...Has SE Gone Full Regress?!?!

[justausername]

I mean sure, it was kinda annoying. But its once. After that all you need is tomes. And the next step isn't atma either.
I much rather this then w/e ShB was. I remember trying for months to get those. Then had to try for months again for another job. And again for another. And bozja was the worst thing ever ugh I HATE it. Bozja was like 0/10, OC is at least 5/10 (if Forked Tower was actually good itd be higher)

[LaylaTsarra]

I'm a relicaholic and I spend no time in Crescent. It's simply not fun. Atma forget it not way I'm running my alts though that over and over again.

[GraceHorizon]

… most people here make the first relic step out to be the worst thing they ever did even tho if you just do it for like an hour or two each evening (not even in OC) you can have the relic together by the end of the week…

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

[Daralii]

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

The drop rates seem to be higher in OC, but the problem with verdigris specifically is how little activity there is in the corner of the map it drops in. 2 FATEs, 1 pot FATE, and Calamity Bound is it.

[Absurdity]

I’m going to call this out as not representative of my experience at all. I spent an hour and a half grinding FATEs in Urqopacha and got zero demiatma for my trouble, so I gave up on FATEs and did CEs in Occult Crescent instead. I did an hour or two a day _on top of my other activities like roulettes_ and it took a couple weeks to complete that step. It was far from the worst or grindiest thing I’ve done, but it was more time than I wanted to spend and the RNG was maddening. The process was adjacent to a good design, but it needed to be a bit faster and a lot more predictable.

I want to focus on that for a moment, has nothing to do with you I just use it as an example. Even with probably some of the worst RNG it took you a couple weeks, and it's not like you were grinding OC like there is no tomorrow.

I honestly can't remember the patch release dates anymore but there were something like 3 months and a few weeks between the first and second relic step. That is plenty of time to finish even casually since you only need to complete the step once.
Is the RNG annoying? Absolutely. But this is not some insane grind.

[GraceHorizon]

I honestly can't remember the patch release dates anymore but there were something like 3 months and a few weeks between the first and second relic step. That is plenty of time to finish even casually since you only need to complete the step once.

The time until next patch is a poor basis of comparison. The relics become obsolete except as glam and the raw materials for the next step as soon as the next major patch drops. In order to be useful, they have to be available for a large fraction of the time between patches. So two weeks isn’t absolutely terrible, but it’s obnoxious; I and all the people I play with resented the process, and some of them just didn’t complete the quest because it was too much work. But the most significant indictment of first relic stage quests was that iirc SE themselves mentioned they’d listened to feedback on the first stage and made the second stage easier in response.

[Absurdity]

The time until next patch is a poor basis of comparison. The relics become obsolete except as glam and the raw materials for the next step as soon as the next major patch drops. In order to be useful, they have to be available for a large fraction of the time between patches. So two weeks isn’t absolutely terrible, but it’s obnoxious; I and all the people I play with resented the process, and some of them just didn’t complete the quest because it was too much work. But the most significant indictment of first relic stage quests was that iirc SE themselves mentioned they’d listened to feedback on the first stage and made the second stage easier in response.

They become pretty much obsaolete as soon as you get them, until the very last patch in an expansion. There is no point in going for a relic as an actual gear upgrade until patch X.55, it's a glorified glamour stick. It is, at best, slightly better than an unaugmented tome weapon, most of the time it is worse than an upgraded crafted weapon.
If you're looking at it from that angle then every relic quest so far has been a horrible grind, because the amount of work you put into getting one is infinitely more than buying a weapon for 200k from the marketboard that easily gets you through 8 months of casual content.

And their so-called "fixed" second step was just making you run roulettes for the 500th time, which I guess is technically easier.

[Xieldras]

Dawntrail's relic's second step very much feels like an "Oh shit! Everyone despises Forked Tower! We better make a substitute fast!" moment. I don't do roulettes anymore so it was more annoying than anything.
The demi-atma step was grueling, but only because the verdigris wouldn't drop in OC and I had to go outside (at least overworld fates give you bicolors as an extra). A simple trader would've worked wonders here (3 of a piece for one of another or something) and it's a shame that such an easy fix was forgotten about entirely.

As for relics in general, I've done one ARR and one HW. I do prefer when we have multiple avenues to grind 'light', and I also enjoyed the books step since it made me go out into the overworld and learn about mob placements.

The best for a relic is simply to offer multiple ways to grind for what you need. That satisfies many different types of players.

[GraceHorizon]

I definitely agree on having multiple avenues to complete relic steps. One of my friends hates Occult Crescent so she did the demiatma step mostly through FATEs. I personally enjoy roulettes so I didn’t mind the aetherwell step, but I have no objection to there being other ways to do it. The Manderville weapons gave me a taste for relics so I like getting them as long as the grind isn’t too obnoxious. After all, I have other things I want to do even in this game, let alone in the rest of my life.

[Hyperia]

I didn’t have an issue with the core idea fo atmas, it works well. The issue I had with the OC implementation is the spawn rate of the needed fates. By the time I had the final one of the rarest drop, I had stacks fo the others. Why? Because the final arms dropped from a fate that almost never spawned more than once in a lockout.
I did the original atma grind in ARR and this took LONGER when the devs said it should be shorter as the drop rate was 20% on the fates. Back in ARR, you had a good idea when a fate would spawn but the OC was double RNG because you never knew when or if it would spawn.